


Path of Gold

by Adel Mortescryche (Mortescryche)



Category: Free!, Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: Attempt at Humor, BAMF Sawada Tsunayoshi, Big Brother Tachibana Makoto, Bisexuality, Character Study, Crack, Crack Crossover, Crack Treated Seriously, Crossovers & Fandom Fusions, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Except for Tsuna's everything mucking it up, Family, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Getting past Internalized Homophobia, High School, Hurt/Comfort, Internalized Homophobia, It's just that all of Tsuna's Classmates are in love with him, Male-Female Friendship, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multi, Not Sexually Dubious, Obsession, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Protective Tachibana Makoto, Puberty, Ren is so Done, Slice of Life, Tachibana Ren finding his own way, The 'Sawada Effect', Timeline What Timeline, Very Weird Humor, Whether they like it or not, Women Being Awesome, multi-fandom - Freeform, whether he likes it or not
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-17
Updated: 2016-06-17
Packaged: 2018-07-15 17:19:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,993
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7231681
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mortescryche/pseuds/Adel%20Mortescryche
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one in which Tsuna and his friends consciously disperse to the four winds when they reach high school, and somehow, all of Tsuna's classmates manage to fall desperately for him before the end of their first year together. And have to find some way to deal with it, since life doesn't stop just because the most unremarkable guy in their year seemed to become irresistible overnight. </p><p>The most popular defense in their arsenal? Is the phrase, "Sawada Tsunayoshi? Makes. No. Sense." </p><p>(Or: All Tachibana Ren had wanted was to make a place for himself, away from Iwatobi and the protective hovering of his family. Nothing could have prepared him or the rest of his class for what getting through high school alongside one Sawada Tsunayoshi would mean for them in the long run.)</p><p>***<br/>Multifandom crossover, though KHR and <i>Free!</i> are the main series. The rest are mostly a passing mention. This isn't romance as much as it is learning to keep going forward even when pesky Flame resonances mean things go dreadfully awry when least expected.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Path of Gold

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** This probably isn’t what some of you were expecting, when you saw something with a KHR and _Free!_ tag. Though characters from _Free!_ and character relationships from there appear and are important in this story, it’s still very much a KHR POV Outsider piece. If primarily in Tachibana Ren’s POV. Just… bear with me, and try it out? *laughs wryly*
> 
> There are plenty of easter eggs from other shows, too. This is technically a crossover between five separate series, though the other three don’t have characters integral to what’s going on here. Which would be why I haven’t tagged them. Feel free to try and guess what they are!
> 
> Title inspired by and credited to Robert Browning’s “Parting at Morning”. For reasons other than a possible walk of shame in the morning after an illicit night out – mind the tags, there’s no physical intimacy in this fic. Though there’s plenty of emotional intimacy. And not necessarily of the non-platonic kind.
> 
>  **Head on down for the trigger warnings.** There's only one warning, in this one, but better safe than sorry, is what I always say.

When it happened, it was the kind of thing no one had been expecting to see. Kind of like hearing a puny, puppyish bark out of sight, then turning the corner and running into a massive dog that stood higher than your waist. One moment the girls had conned all of them into taking care of the carpentry for the stalls that they were setting up outside for the cultural festival, which they eventually gave into with good-natured ribbing at each other, and the next, Sawada was exasperatedly shrugging off his uniform shirt with the rest of them and- his _arms._

His arms. His shoulders. And, were those _abs_ , when he tugged up the hem of his sleeveless tee to wipe away the sweat beading on his face?

Ren was vaguely certain he was hyperventilating. He’d have felt embarrassed about it if he’d been the only person reacting this way, but he _wasn’t_. The rest of his classmates had started slowing down, whether it was the rhythm of hammers slamming down on nails or even just the easy chatting and grumbling that had been taking place, protesting the fact that the girls had left them with the dirty work. Even if they had already promised to take on the lion’s share of the task in their class. Somehow, everyone kept taking tiny peeks at Sawada from the corner of their eyes, not quite able to believe what they were seeing. Heck, Kawamura had just shot Ren a thoroughly weirded out glance, which he’d returned with interest, and they _didn’t even speak to each other in class._

And it wasn’t just them. When a few of the girls had come back, bearing some of the _onigiri_ that’d they’d offered to bring out to the boys as a treat to make up for leaving them with the work outside, Miyazawa had actually stumbled over her own feet, nearly dropping the container she was holding up. The only reason she didn’t was because one of the girls behind her had steadied her.

Sawada didn’t even seem to be noticing the way all of them were staring at him. After a certain point, when they were wrapping up for the day, it was just too awkward to say or ask anything, so they just stayed mum.

Not that they stopped talking about it, no. Not when one of the quietest and most diminutive boys in their class had turned out to have the kind of body that some models or athletes would kill for.

“But it’s crazy, where was he _hiding_ all of that, anyway?” Ayumi-chan muttered to one of her girlfriends, during lunch. Ren found himself nodding dolefully, along with nearly everyone else who’d been in hearing distance. Thankfully, Ayumi-chan didn’t looked too offended to catch everyone eavesdropping on her conversation.

Then again, it was possible that she wanted to share her disbelief with everyone. Because, for whatever strange reason, this had turned into something of an in-class issue, something that they didn’t really share with friends from outside of their class. Or outside of their school, for that matter. Because no one would really understand _why_ they were so hung up on Sawada’s apparently godlike body.

Cultural day came and went (the class had managed to vote on setting up a horror maze, which was fun), but the issue of Sawada didn’t go anywhere. If anything, it got _worse._

Because, one fine day after they’d returned from their winter vacations, Ren found himself blankly staring at Sawada’s dozing, drooling face and blankly wondering if he’d ever noticed how lovely Sawada looked.

He found himself going through a mini am-I-gay-is-that-why-this-is-happening-to-me crisis in the bathroom, and ran into nearly five other classmates who had somehow suffered the same problem _on the same day._ They kept quiet about it till the lunch break, watching shiftily as Sawada silently headed out to who-knew-where to finish his _bento_ , and all but pounced on the rest of the class, demanding to know if they’d noticed the shift. If it was even a shift at all, since they’d somehow managed to miss how, ahem, _built_ , Sawada was for close to seven months before they saw him stripping off his shirt and unconsciously showing off his arms in _the_ sleeveless tee despite how chilly it was outside.

Unsurprisingly, everyone reacted in much the same way.

“ _Why_ , God, _why.”_ Ayumi-chan whimpered into her arms. Asada patted her comfortingly on the back, looking just as pained as the rest of them.

“Do you think anyone else has noticed?” Miyamura muttered, absently tearing off pieces of his melon- _pan_ and tossing them up into the air, leaning forward and back to catch the pieces that didn’t sail perfectly into his open mouth.

“Doubt it,” Ren grumbled, resting his chin on his knuckles, “There would’ve been more noise about it if they did. Maybe no one else interacts enough with him to be able to tell?”

“That’s true,” Tanabe mumbled, shifting in his seat and carefully pushing up his spectacles, “Sawada-san doesn’t really talk to anyone else. He just does his work and goes back home after school.”

“You’re one to talk,” ribbed someone, but it was with a cheerfully teasing tone, and Tanabe flushed, ducking down and hiding behind his fringe. He was smiling, though.

“So he’s in the going home club?” asked someone else, and Ren found himself nodding along with everyone else in his near vicinity. Which wasn’t surprising, really, seeing as Sawada sat right next to him in class.

“…so he looks really good, huh.” Kawamura sighed dreamily.

Ren cringed and turned around to whack him over the head. Even if everyone else was smiling dazedly along with him. Thankfully, everyone managed to get themselves back under control before class started. To the point that they were back to their mostly-normal selves by the time Sawada headed back in.

“Maybe he should be our _‘takane no hana’,”_ Asada said half seriously. Though her face was perfectly blank when she said it.

Everyone _groaned_ , including a few of the girls, muttering about how life wasn’t supposed to be a shoujo manga. No matter how nice Sawada looked sometimes. Especially when he tilted his head and gave one of those slow, mild smiles of his.

It only got worse, right before summer break. Because, suddenly, rather than focusing on the enticing swell of pretty lingerie beneath the girls’ half translucent summer tops, Ren found himself staring at the back of Sawada’s neck when he pulled his hair back in a tiny, messy tail. Or at the muscle of Sawada’s forearms when he stretched his arms up and _up_ , after a long day at school. Along with everyone else, as usual. Ayumi had gone faintly pink, surreptitiously wiping away a bit of blood from her nose. He nearly missed the days when Ayumi was the prettiest girl any of them had ever seen – their collective fascination for Sawada had taught everyone early on that no matter how pretty and delicate Ayumi looked, she was possibly the dirtiest minded of them all.

But, _oh_ , his shoulders just looked so-

Sawada cracked his head to the side, muzzily massaging his neck, and Ren couldn’t stop staring at his fingers, even when Kawamura hastily shoved him from the back, because they _weren’t supposed to make it obvious._

Ren’s breath got caught in his throat when those tired amber-brown eyes focused on him.

“Everything okay, Tachibana-kun?” Sawada asked him curiously, beginning to straighten.

Ren choked, and didn’t struggle when Kawamura hastily slammed his face into his desk.

“Ahahaha, don’t mind him Sawada-san, Ren’s just feeling under the weather today. Poor guy’s come here all the way from a tiny town by the sea y’know, haha, it’s the city heat, it’s boiling his brain inside his skull!” Umeda yelped from the seat in from of him, laughing obnoxiously and ruffling at the hair on the back of Ren’s head, not really giving him the chance to explain himself.

…which was probably for the best, really. Ren’s face was red enough that you could probably fry eggs on it.

“Oh,” Sawada murmured, sounding bemused.

“Don’t mind him, really, he’s an idiot, is our Ren,” Kawamura told him earnestly, making him laugh.

When Ren finally managed to dislodge Umeda’s hand enough to look up, Sawada had a surprisingly fond smile on his face, at once looking a lot more human and approachable than he had in the entire year that they’d all known him.

“It’s called tact, Ren, and subtlety. You should learn it.” Ayumi told him snidely later, after class, smirking at him along with Asada and the others. Umeda certainly hadn’t stopped laughing at him since Sawada had left.

Ren made a face, and slumped down in his chair.

“I just- he looked so- it’s not like I can _help_ it, y’know,” he muttered, and the laughter slowly petered out.

Because everyone agreed with him. Every single one. They were all somehow infatuated with their quiet classmate, even though they knew absolutely nothing about him. It was just… _him._ They might have been able to live their lives not noticing him or ignoring him in the beginning, but those days had passed. And now that he’d registered in their minds, they just couldn’t _stop._

*

They’d all come to terms with their odd, unrequited obsession with Sawada, so having one of the new first years walk up to their classroom door and awkwardly confess to him right outside their classroom, with _all of them as witness_ , was a rather uncomfortable return to reality. And the fact that, for all that they’d silently agreed to watch over him from a distance, it didn’t mean anyone else would respect that courtesy.

Of course, whether other people chose to respect that courtesy or not was completely irrelevant. Especially when Sawada flushed slightly, shuffled in place, and apologised softly, explaining in a murmur that he already has a girlfriend that he’s happy with.

He’s polite, respectful, perfectly serious and perfectly ignorant of the fact that he just shattered close to thirty hearts other than the girl tearing up in front of him.

“You’ve got a girlfriend?” Ayumi asked him during lunch, somehow managing to sound perfectly normal, even when they were all still silently reeling in shock.

Sawada, in the process of getting out his _bento_ blinked at her owlishly.

“…Yes. Is there something wrong with that?” he asked, confused.

Ayumi backpedalled immediately, laughing nervously.

“No, no, no. Of course not! It’s just-”

“It’s just,” Asada said, voice soft, “that you didn’t tell any of us about it. We were surprised.”

If it had been anyone except for Asada who said that, Asada with her blank, serious face and soft, serious voice, Ren suspected the words would have sounded very rude. Or like something a stalker would say. Sawada didn’t really have to share anything about his personal life with them, after all.

“Oh. Then, yes, Asada-san. I’m sorry. I… don’t really say much in class, do I,” he laughed awkwardly, rubbing at the back of his head. They all stared at him in surprise, because here was yet another face to the boy they’d been half in love with for the better part of an year.

“It’s fine!” Umeda snapped, getting up and whacking him roughly on the back and nearly sending him crashing into his desk, much to the collective horror of everyone else. Ren aimed a kick at his ankle in retaliation, making him yelp and hop around in pain, clutching at his foot and making all of them laugh.

And Sawada, _finally_ , sat back in class with all of them for lunch, laughing cheerfully at the jokes that Miyamura and Asada were cracking at each other along with the rest of them.

“I’ll ask my girlfriend to come for cultural day, maybe, I could introduce her to all of you then,” he said decisively at the end of the day. Ren blinked at him, wide-eyed, and more than a little taken aback.

“You… Y’know that you don’t need to do that, right,” he replied haltingly, since no one else seemed to know what to say.

Sawada shook his head with a little smile, though.

“No, it’s fine. I _want_ to introduce her to all of you. You’ve all been so nice to me, and you keep me included even though I’m never around, and even if I don’t talk much. She’d scold me for being so unsocial, if she were in our school.” He said ruefully, making more than one of the girls giggle.

They were all smiling, though. Because this unasked for praise was even more unexpected than how transfixing Sawada could be, at times.

*

“Remember when Sawada was absolutely _dame?”_ Ayumi sighed nostalgically.

The rest of the class that was nearby blinked at her, bemused.

“ _Dame?_ Sawada was _dame?_ I don’t remember that.” Miyamura said slowly.

“No, but he _was._ His grades weren’t too bad, but he’d keep falling down and doing badly at sports in gym. The third years had been giving him trouble in the beginning of our first year, too, but they just stopped at some point.” Ayumi corrected him with a sniff.

“What? Really?” Shima asked her, brows raised.

Ren looked up from where he was helping Asada and Yoshimura alter the maid costumes that they were going to be using for the café their class had to put up on Cultural Day, since the girls hadn’t been satisfied with buying them in a store. And they _couldn’t_ buy or rent new ones from a store, not when they were doing a genderbent maid café. None of them were willing to try on maid costumes in a store. They’d be called perverts, even if the girls _did_ go along with them.

“Yeah, I kinda remember that too,” he said, “that’s how I met him in the first place. He slipped and fell right in front of me when I was looking up the classrooms our first day here.”

“What, seriously?” Yoshimura asked, snickering slightly. Asada rolled her eyes, and smacked her across the knuckles.

“I guess it’s weird because he just _wasn’t_ , after a point. Maybe that’s why the third years backed off.” Umeda said, squinting slightly, surreptitiously backing away to the door.

Ren made a face, and reached out to tug the large boy closer.

“You’re getting fitted next,” he said, ignoring the way Umeda wailed. Large and built like a brickhouse or not, none of the girls were going to let them get away with not dressing as maids. He and Kawamura had accepted it, so Umeda would have to at some point too.

 “Y’know,” Asada said suddenly, “this means that _Sawada’s_ going to have to wear a maid costume too.”

Everyone abruptly went still, Ayumi quickly glancing about to see if Sawada was anywhere nearby. Ren shook his head at her, since he’d seen Sawada going to the drama club room with Serizawa to see if they could find any more aprons.

“Oh _no,”_ she whimpered, making more than one of them laugh wryly. Ren included.

“It’d a _maid costume._ Do you think he’ll look cute or hot?” she asked, after a moment, and squeaked when Shima tried to throttle her.

“Because it could be either. He’s got an androgynous face, yeah?” she continued, once she’d pried off Shima’s hands.

“Ayumi, _stop,”_ all of them whined, and she snickered.

Because actually needing to _see_ it was going to be bad enough without sitting and contemplating whether Sawada would look like a pretty girl or a hot guy, if they got him in a skirt. Those toned and muscled arms of his certainly didn’t look feminine beneath his shirtsleeves, for one. They were shaped wrong. And neither did the hint of the six pack they’d all caught a passing glimpse of, before the last year’s cultural day.

Not that women couldn’t have six packs. But Sawada’s just… didn’t look _feminine._

“Well, didn’t he say he’s got his girlfriend coming over?” Kawamura said abruptly, looking away from the menu he’d been discussing with Tsuchida.

“Ooh,” they all hummed as one. He’d probably focus on looking hot then, right. Even if his face was androgynous.

“Well, he’ll look good either way.” Yoshimura said decisively, neatly snipping at the thread she was pulling up.

“There is that.”

“Yeah.”

“True.”

“There is what?” Sawada asked curiously, when he stepped into the class, closely followed by Serizawa, both of them weighed down by dresses and aprons.

“Oh, we were just discussing whether it would be a good idea to keep other food available, along with the desserts. It’s not like everyone coming here would want to eat sweets, right,” Tsuchida said blandly.

“Oh, right. I wouldn’t want to, in their place. Though my friends probably would. Kyoko would, for sure.” Sawada said, tilting his head and thinking it over.

Things abruptly came to a standstill again, and they all jerked about to stare at him, no matter what they were doing.

“…Kyoko?” Miyazaki asked weakly. Because even if he had a girlfriend, Sawada was formal enough at school that none of them had expected him to use his girlfriend’s first name so freely.

 Sawada peered at them, first looking surprised, then awkwardly amused, even flailing slightly in place.

“Oh, you know, everyone in our school back home just called her Kyoko-chan. She has an older brother, so he’s the one everyone knew as Sasagawa-san.” He said with a tiny grin.

“Though, honestly, Onii-chan and Kyoko are both pretty chilled out about stuff like that.”

 _Onii-chan…_ they thought faintly, before the class as a whole glanced at each other and mutually decided to let it go.

“ _Well,_ ” Ren said loudly, after clearing his throat, “I’m done with Umeda’s measurements, you may as well come next, Sawada.”

“Oh? Okay,” He said immediately, laying down the dresses and aprons in his arms down on one of the desks.

“How do you want me? Do you need me to take anything off?”

More than one person in the room choked at that, and Ren found himself squeaking before Asada slammed a hand into his back, making him regain control.

His voice still sounded a little high pitched when he told Sawada that that wasn’t necessary, though.

*

…it just figured that, if Sawada looked as good and as riveting as he did, his girlfriend was going to be the kind of stunningly pretty that tended to make people imagine shoujo sparkles and flowers coming into being all on their own in the background whenever she smiled.

Except that she was also kind of terrifying.

“ _Tsu-kun,”_ she was cooing, a hand held delicately to her cheek while Sawada laughed at her, actually shaking his hips to show off the frills and ruffles they’d attached to all the costumes, attempting them to make them ultra-feminine to the point that everyone coming in would be able to tell it was supposed to be a parody.

The effect actually looked good on some of the boys, Sawada and Shima, to name a few, since both of them had faces that could look good even in something covered in lace and frills.

But, the picture Sawada made, grinning and swaying while clutching a tray to his chest, was distracting enough that _all_ of them were having trouble concentrating on the rest of their customers.

It only got worse when a slim, dark haired man stepped in, eyes catching on Sawada in clear appreciation. The smirk on his face nearly made Umeda step forward to kick him out, frilly costume be damned, but Ayumi managed to get a hand around his elbow and hold him in place.

Because Sawada didn’t look uncomfortable. If anything, he looked _delighted._

“ _Wao,”_ the man was saying, smirk not shifting an inch, while Kyoko-san was still smiling sweetly.

“Kyoya-san! What’re you doing here?” Sawada was asking, laughing happily, and not protesting even when ‘Kyoya-san’ reached out to lazily tug at the ruffles, fingers edging dangerously close to his thighs.

The effect that Sawada had made, once they’d finally gotten him into the costume, had been that of a rather fit young man cosplaying as a girl. They hadn’t attempted to camouflage the lean expanse of his body, after all, and the dress had ultimately only highlighted the toned lines of his arms and legs, not to mention the trim cut of his waist.

The three made a frighteningly pretty picture together, especially when Kyoko-san reached out to smooth a thumb over Sawada’s left cheekbone.

“I told you we should have gotten him in lace before,” Kyoko-san was murmuring wickedly, while Kyoya-san gave a soft huff of laughter, sounding genuinely amused.

“That would’ve been a bad idea. I certainly wouldn’t have let go if we did.” He said, which, _what._

Ren tried not to pass out, holding onto the snack table with a white-knuckled grip, acting as a support to Kawamura too, because his friend had two hands fisted in the back of his costume.

Sawada hadn’t stopped smiling. His smile had only grown broader, looking so much happier than anything they’d seen till date.

“Tachibana,” Miyazaki hissed in an undertone, gesturing pointedly with her tray. Ren blinked, and belatedly set two mousse cups onto the tray.

“Keep it together, guys,” Yoshimura said wryly, on Kawamura’s other side.

Not that the girls were really irritated. They couldn’t be. Not when Kyoya-san’s words had shorted out the brains of nearly all the boys who’d been close enough to hear them.

“ _Kyoya-san_ ,” Sawada was saying, sounding exasperated, “what have I told you about time and place? And, anyway, we aren’t going out any more,”

“Well, Takeshi’s a lot more adventurous than you, Tsu-kun, you can’t _blame_ him-”

“The baby carnivore is adventurous enough,” Kyoya-san murmured with a sharp glance at her, which had both Sawada and his girlfriend laughing.

“Why Kyoya-san, _thank you,_ it’s so sweet of you to stand up for me,” Sawada was saying, and was he _actually reaching up to-_

“Oh, God,” Kawamura said in a small voice, staring hard as Sawada tugged Kyoya-san down to brush a feather-light kiss across his cheek. Ren made a pained sound, because the older man still hadn’t let go of the frills on Sawada’s dress. If anything, his fingers were absently tugging them up.

Why the heck wasn’t his girlfriend protesting?

“Ayumi, I think you’ll have to tell them to stop making a scene, they’re attracting too much attention from our customers,” Ren bit out, when Ayumi came back to pick up the next order.

She stopped at the table to stare along with them for a moment, though, because Sawada had pulled away and was pressing a firmer kiss to Kyoko-san’s cheek, making her laugh brightly, lifting her arms to loosely wind them around his hips.

Kyoya-san didn’t even look put out by that. Heck, his hand was still tangled in frills.

“Maybe he just really, really like lace?” Yoshimura muttered, sounding morbidly amused.

“Yeah, maybe that’s why Kyoko’s bringing her boyfriend’s ex around to stare at him in a maid costume,” Ayumi was muttering back. “That, or they’re all in a threesome together.”

“ _Ayumi,”_ they all hissed at her, scandalised, because none of them wanted to imagine Sawada in that kind of situation.

Though it was all too easy to imagine it, at this point, what with the level of comfort all three of them seemed to have with each other.

Both Kyoko and Kyoya took their leave soon after, and Sawada happily got back to taking orders with a smile, not seeming to notice the bug-eyed stares that some of their customers were giving him.

“Kyoko said she’d come by again when things start winding down to introduce herself,” he told them in a relatively quiet moment, when he was taking a break by the snack bar. Ren and Kawamura both gave him awkward smiles, because even if the revelation that Sawada was either bi or open to experimentation was unnerving at this point, if only because all the boys in class had resigned themselves to thinking that Sawada was incontrovertibly heterosexual after finding out that he had a girlfriend, it didn’t mean that they should be rude to him.

Especially not when, all said and done, Kyoko-san seemed to be a nice person. If terrifying and terrifyingly pretty all at once.

Yoshimura had been gearing up to ask just _how_ Sawada and Kyoko-san had chosen to get together, especially if he’d been involved with someone who seemed as intense as Kyoya-san before that at some point, when they were interrupted by someone loudly calling out for Sawada by name at the door.

“Tsuna!” the tall teen was calling out, and Umeda had a quiet freakout beside them when Sawada laughed brightly and went to meet him.

“That’s- isn’t that _Yamamoto Takeshi?”_ Umeda muttered.

“Sorry, who?” Ren asked, bemused.

“Wait, ‘Takeshi’?” Kawamura cut in incredulously, spinning around to stare at the pretty picture Sawada and (possibly) Yamamoto made, since Yamamoto had hauled Sawada up for a spinning hug, of all things.

They all quickly averted their eyes, feeling their faces go hot. Whoever the heck the teen was, he wasn’t paying any attention to whether Sawada’s dress was riding up or not.

“Whoa- calm down Yamamoto!” the teen beside them was saying, laughing.

“Yeeeeah, definitely Yamamoto Takeshi, that’s Seto Takuma,” Umeda was saying, making the rest of them round on the muscular boy with scowls.

Umeda flinched back.

“He’s a first string player on Seidou’s baseball team. You guys know Seidou, right?” he said, his face twisted up in a grimace.

“Well, it _sounds_ familiar…” Ren mumbled, turning back to watch as a newcomer whacked Yamamoto around the head, much to the horror of Seto, though Sawada and the shorter boy beside Seto just looked amused.

“It _better_ sound familiar,” Shima said in a low growl as he sidled closer to them, “They reached the Nationals two years in a row and actually won last year.”

“What, seriously?” Ayumi asked, her brows rising along with Ren and Kawamura’s.

“Yamamoto’s been a first stringer since last year, I actually follow the matches.” Umeda explained, exchanging nods with Shima.

“All of you, get back to work.” Asada said irately, stopping by the table with a frowning Tanabe and making them scatter with squeaks, but Sawada suddenly appeared, carting both Yamamoto and the ash-haired newcomer behind him with a toothy grin.

“Everyone, meet Yamamoto Takeshi and Gokudera Hayato,” he said happily, with one arm intertwined with Gokudera’s and with Yamamoto’s arms thrown over his shoulders.

“They’re my best friends in the world,” he went on, and to the amazement of everyone in the class, both Yamamoto and Gokudera flushed as hard as any of them when Sawada smiled at them or did anything too eye-catching.

“Ah, _Tsuna_ -”

“ _Juudaime-”_

Ren coughed, and ducked his head into Tanabe’s shoulder to laugh good and hard as both of Sawada’s friends dogpiled him in a violently affectionate hug while simultaneously arguing with each other over his head about the other being too rough.

“Takeshi goes to Seidou,” Sawada explained later, when he was picking up drinks for both Yamamoto and Gokudera, as well as the pair of disturbingly lovely looking purple and blue haired twins that had stepped in after them. “Hayato goes to Rakuzan Academy – yes, in Kyoto, though he’s in his third year there because he convinced them to let him skip a grade – Mukuro’s home schooled, while Chrome and Kyoko both go to the same school as another friend of ours, back in our home town – Midori _kōkō_. Speaking of which, Kyoya-san is currently studying Law in distance at Saikyoudai-”

All of them nodded dumbly, and helped him load some pastries onto his tray for his friends, watching as he all but skipped back to their table.

“He seems like a completely different person, doesn’t he?” Ren said, finally, finding himself smiling just as helplessly as the rest of his classmates.

“Oh, I don’t know, maybe it’s because they’re a moresome and he’s just happy to see his- OW!” Ayumi rubbed at the back of her head, but the swat that Kawamura had delivered did nothing to stop the smirk that was tugging at her lips.

“You have to agree, though,” Asada murmured, finally giving in and setting her tray down, settling back to watch with them as the male twin teasingly tugged Sawada closer by the hips, to vocal protests by both of Sawada’s ‘best’ friends and soft giggles from his sister, “they make it very, very easy to assume there’s something more going on there.”

“Maybe they’re all just really close friends,” Ren shot back snidely, “Not everything has to be sexualised, y’know.”

That got him surprised looks from all his friends, making him lean back, feeling uncomfortable.

“What? It’s what my older brother always says. He’s got a friend who’s leery about hypersexualised relationships1.”

Yoshimura patted him comfortingly on the top of his head, making him growl and duck away. Unsuccessfully.

“There, there, young grasshopper. They’re very wise words.” She said.

“Yeah. We just didn’t expect to hear something so wise from _you.”_ Umeda said sweetly, making everyone except for Ren laugh.

Ren rolled his eyes, and looked back to Sawada’s table of friends, just in time to see the two from before come back in. All of his friends immediately leaned forward, in the hope of seeing something as juicy as the scene with Kyoya-san and Kyoko-san from before, but Sawada didn’t seem to be interested in obliging them, since he simply welcomed his girlfriend and ex with a smile before switching over to another table, to take another order.

Yamamoto and Kyoya-san seemed perfectly willing to fuel Ren’s friends’ prurient interest, though, since Yamamoto lazily leaned back to stare up at the older man that had walked up behind him. They _kept_ staring at each other until Gokudera muttered something that made Yamamoto laugh and shrug his shoulders.

“Wait, what? Yamamoto’s gay?” Shima asked, sounding bemused. “Wouldn’t that be tough when you’re on a high school sports team? I heard Seidou’s entire baseball club stays in dorms on campus.”

“Maybe that makes them more tolerant,” Kawamura said cheerfully, waggling his eyebrows at Shima and making everyone groan in disgust.

Ren couldn’t quite stop smiling, though. If only because all of Sawada’s friends seemed so comfortable with each other, even with potentially complicated relationships between them. It was only highlighted when, after returning to pick up the new table’s order from them, he served the mousse and flavoured tea and slowly drifted back to his friends, drawing to a stop beside Kyoko-san and – there was no other word for it – _cuddling_ into her, much to the amusement of the rest of his friends.

It vaguely reminded him of when his older brother and his friends were still in high school, years and years ago. Since his onii-chan was an old man now. However much he loudly denied it.

Even if he and his entire class were caught between love and infatuation for Sawada, there was something about seeing this kind of easy, loose-limbed and comfortable friendship that left him feeling warm.

The moment was wrecked when Ayumi suddenly turned around to sharply tweak his nose, though, smirking up at him when he squinted down at her. He didn’t even get a chance to chew her out, because Umeda and Kawamura both threw themselves at his back, nearly sending him toppling.

“Don’t think heavy thoughts, Ren-chan. At least our _Takane no Hana_ wasn’t lost to some miscreant from this school.” Asada said blankly, staring down at him with an emotionless face.

Ren growled, and tried to shake them off, finally giving up when he realised that he wouldn’t get them off no matter what he did.

At least his predicament had Sawada laughing a little helplessly when he came by with Kyoko-san to introduce her to them. And everyone else, for that matter.

*

By the start of their third year of high school, most of the class that had originally fallen desperately in love with Sawada alongside Ren had already been reordered into other classrooms. They tended to stay in touch with each other, though. If only to bemoan their fate – the ‘Sawada Effect’2 hadn’t lessened at all, even after their break. If anything, Sawada just seemed to draw more people in. It happened slowly, and not nearly to the extremes of what Ren’s first set of classmates had gone through, but he’d seen some of the newer victims blinking dully, perplexed, on more than one occasion.

He’d just traded resigned glances with Tanabe and Shima, both of whom sat to his front and side respectively. Kawamura, stuck on the other side of the classroom from them, spent most of the class hours muffling laughter into his blazer sleeves, much to the disgust of their teachers, who’d somehow uniformly managed to escape the effect.

Which was… possibly a good thing? At least in their cases they were all roughly the same age. And willing to take it in their stride, since it was happening to all of them. Having adults fall for their classmate wouldn’t have been nearly as amusing.

Ren vaguely wondered whether Ayumi’s current classmates were just as bad, or if the effect was watered down when the other students just ran into Sawada in the corridors.

And then, despairingly, wondered why he’d been (un)lucky enough to have been stuck with Sawada in his class for all three years of high school. It just figured, didn’t it.

Whatever little signs of Sawada’s dull, ‘dame’ self from their first year had almost completely disappeared, by now. It had been difficult to accept that Sawada had ever been _dame_ , before, but it was nearly impossible now. And, for whatever strange reason, the mystery of Sawada was starting to get nearly as all-consuming as their blind affection for him.

“Have you noticed? He never walks home. Or cycles. Or even _travels_ alone. The only time he’s alone is when he’s within the school campus.” Ayumi said, once, when they were all eating lunch in her classroom.

“Well, it’s not like it’s a rule that all high school students have to travel home alone. Even if they don’t have friends, there’s nothing wrong if someone picks them up,” Yoshimura said practically, gesturing with her chopsticks in the air.

“Maybe, but I thought it was just young masters or pretty _ojous_ that got picked up in high end cars at the end of a school day.” Ayumi shot back, and grunted when Shima whacked her upside the head.

“Sawada isn’t a young master.” He said scornfully, then paused, and glanced around at the rest of them, the confidence in his face flagging when he noticed just how hesitant everyone looked.

“…he _could_ be. It’s not like any of us really know anything much about him. Other than the fact that it’s ridiculously easy to fall for him no matter what your tastes or orientation are. And that he’s apparently bisexual. And has friends from all over the place from outside the school.” Kawamura mumbled around his mouthful of yakisoba bread.

“Say he _is_ loaded,” Asada said, and stopped to stare everyone down until they shut up before going on. “Say he’s loaded. If he is, what exactly is he doing _here?”_

They _all_ paused to think that one over. Because it was a very good point. All of them were good points. If Sawada _did_ come from a family with lots of money, he had absolutely no reason to come to their school. Hell, about the only good thing about their school was the fact that it was terribly easy to get into. Unless you were interested in sports, in which case there were other reasons, but if you weren’t… no. The only good thing about their school was how easy it was to get in.

That was the reason Ren was here, after all. He’d wanted to get out of Iwatobi no matter what, much to the exasperation of nearly everyone in his family, and he’d taken the easy way out.

“…he’s got a friend at Rakuzan. Or, at least, he _did._ If he _was_ a young master, it would’ve made a lot more sense to go there. Isn’t that where everyone sends their kids if they want them to make connections?” Tanabe asked, frowning down into his _bento_.

Ren sighed, and reached over to ruffle his hair. Because Tanabe looked too much like a little puppy left out in the rain. Yoshimura patted him comfortingly on the shoulder, too, and the poor guy went red, not sure which hand he wanted to get away from first.

“Maybe he’s just… not academically gifted enough to go there,” Ren offered, making more than one of them snicker slightly. Asada brought an end to the snickering rather quickly, though.

“If he’s loaded, that wouldn’t have made a difference.” She said blankly.

“And yet, it would’ve made a difference at _some_ point.” Tanabe replied, once he’d gotten away from Ren and Yoshimura’s hands.

“Not for long,” Ayumi said seriously, frowning in thought.

That brought them all to a stop, because it was true again. Tsuna had been slow in class, back in those hazy months when they’d barely noticed that he existed, but he’d quickly caught up to the rest of them. He still wasn’t a top graded student, if anything he kept going between average and above average depending on the subject, but he wasn’t bad enough to find it impossible to go on even if he _were_ enrolled in a private school.

“…maybe he thought that he wouldn’t catch up fast enough to join a top level school like that one?” Kawamura suggested, after a beat. They turned that thought over in their heads and then, slowly, one after another, their shoulders slumped.

Sawada? Made absolutely no sense.

*

The fact that they were so used to the Sawada Effect was probably a bad thing, in the long run. They’d been lucky to have spent over an year blindly beholden to him – at least then they hadn’t been stuck noticing all strange things that kept happening around him, then.

Like the fact that his English scores were atrocious, but the one time their teacher sprung a free conversation question at him, he’d responded absently and with perfect confidence. It had been unexpected enough that even Sawada, spends-most-of-his-days-staring-out-the-window-or-drooling-into-his-desk Sawada, noticed the way the whole class had been staring at him in ill-hidden surprise.

Ren suspected that _that_ specific incident had roped in at least five new classmates. If the unconscious confidence with speaking a relatively foreign language hadn’t done it, the way Sawada had flushed violently in the aftermath certainly did.

Another fact was just how many people Sawada seemed to know, outside of their school. He barely interacted with the class, though he seemed oddly grateful and touched whenever they spoke to him, but lunch breaks saw Sawada sequestered away with a clearly homemade _bento_ and a phone pressed to his ears.

The one time someone had gotten close enough to listen in, they claimed that Sawada had been speaking in yet another foreign language, one that hadn’t been immediately recognisable at that. Sawada had apparently switched back to Japanese seamlessly the moment he’d noticed that he wasn’t completely alone, but it hadn’t been fast enough to prevent Miyamura from registering that he hadn’t originally been speaking Japanese.

His weird language proficiency aside, they’d all noticed how often Sawada seemed to be away from the school on sick leave. It could be anywhere between a single day to a week to one memorable incident when he’d been away for a whole month and all of them had somehow managed to convince themselves that they’d just been imagining how transfixing Sawada was.

And then he came back, and the effect hit them with the same amount of relative impact as a sledgehammer slamming into their faces.

Not to mention how Sawada tended to come back with signs of having been injured while away, visible in the bandages and strips of gauze that were mostly hidden beneath the bulk of their uniforms, especially since Sawada tended to wear every layer of it with gusto no matter how messily he wore it.

His eyes always seemed a little harder after every leave. They all found themselves trying harder to make Sawada register what was going on in class on those days, relaxing only when Sawada’s eyes softened again.

The oddly toned body beneath Sawada’s loose and messy clothes had been one of the earlier inconsistencies, admittedly, but it was one that none of them had been able to forget easily. Especially since, over time, Sawada had somehow been gaining a weird sort of intensity that only heightened the effect that his physical presence had on the rest of them.

It would have been bearable if the idiot knew what he was doing, at least then they could have resented him in peace. But, no. Sawada had the audacity to veer back and forth between looking like an adorable waif and looking decidedly hot and having absolutely no idea what kind of effect he was having on his classmates.

It had been nice when they were still reeling under the effects. They’d been able to moon over him in peace since they’d been completely mentally and physically incapable of doing anything else. Now? Midway through their third year and closer to being full graduates than not? It was exasperating. And exhausting. And watching the more naïve members of their class falling for Sawada’s charms just left them with a bad taste in their mouths.

“But- He’s- I’m not _-why”_

Poor Honda sounded like he wanted to cry, sitting hunched over and shaking in his seat after class, well after Sawada and a majority of their class had already left. Ren, in the process of packing his bag, glanced at him warily, not sure why the buzz-headed linebacker was even confessing to being a fresh victim of the Sawada Effect to _him_ of all people.

Maybe he just had a welcoming face? Nagisa-chan always insisted that he did, giggling into his hands about how kind faced and approachable the men of the Tachibana household were. It always reduced him and Makoto to bright red, gibbering messes. Him moreso than his brother, since his onii-chan at least knew how to keep Nagisa-chan under control. Mostly. Their father was always terribly amused, though. Even if Ren had noticed how red the tops of his ears got whenever Nagisa-chan started on about what ‘great specimens of humanity’ all of them were.

Ran and kaa-chan would watch them devolve into stuttered protests with a wide grin and a smirk apiece. Every. Time.

“I’m not _\- I’m not-”_ Honda was actually starting to sound hysterical. Tanabe, who was hovering by the door waiting for him to get done packing his stuff, shot him a delicate frown, not-so-subtly jerking his head in Honda’s direction.

Ren felt his face folding under the weight of a grimace. Shima, who’d poked his head through the open door, clearly wondering what was taking them so long, grimaced right back at him.

“Not what? Gay?” Ren said, finally, straightening.

Honda shot him a half-crazed look, gearing up to yell from the look of it, but Ren cut him off with a hard-eyed stare. Because he’d been living with this shit for more than two full years now, damnit, and while he had some measure of pity for the newcomers, he wasn’t going to let any of the poor fools take it out on him.

“Not what, Honda-kun.” He said, mildly, channelling his big brother to the fullest extent possible. Because this was looking to be about as grizzly an affair as Makoto needing to bodily wrestle Haru-nii away from open bodies of water in the middle of winter.

Something had to give, in their silent faceoff. And, unsurprisingly enough, it was Honda who gave in first, collapsing forward into his seat and burying his face in his hands. Ren sighed, stepped away from his desk, and walked up to Honda’s hunched over form to rub a hand up and down his back soothingly.

“I’m not. I’m _not.”_ He repeated, mumbling it into his hands.

Ren gave a short, bitter laugh.

“Doesn’t matter. We’ve got people in our classes who’ve somehow fallen for him when they don’t physically or mentally respond to anyone or anything else.”

Honda stiffened, at that, and slowly peered up at him. Looking more disbelieving than not.

Ren rolled his eyes.

“Did you really think this is the first time it’s happened?”

“Well, it seems to take longer for the athletes to get hit,” Shima commented blandly, from the door.

Ren actually felt Honda jerk under his hand. He forced him to stay seated, though. If nothing else, his family genetics ensured he had the physical mass to keep people in place when he’d rather they didn’t move.

Honda kept staring up at him, looking more disturbed by the second.

Ren shrugged, unrepentant.

“You’re not the first. You’re definitely not going to be the last, either.”

“The Effect seems to be getting better, though,” Tanabe mused, looking thoughtful. And just a bit clinical, which was starting to become a familiar sight ever since the effect had stopped affecting them as much.

“’Effect’?” Honda repeated, looking flummoxed. Ren eyed the pink spots high on his cheeks, and lifted his hand away.

“The Sawada Effect.” He said, succinct. “And it’s not just the athletes, Shima. It just seems to take longer when you’re not specifically attracted to men.”

Shima ooh-ed in understanding over that, nodding to himself, while Tanabe snorted, sounding a little amused.

“It-I’m not?” Honda asked, and Ren gave him a tired smile, patting him on the shoulders.

“That’s for you to decide, I’m afraid. You’re not alone, though.”

“Oh.” He said dully.

“Yeah.”

“You mean, it’s _him?”_

Ren’s brows rose. This was different. Most people were too far gone to really question the Effect further than Sawada-can’t live without him-but I thought I liked girls.

“Probably is. Is that going to be a problem?” he asked, smiling. And distantly heard both Tanabe and Shima squeak by the door.

Honda blinked up at him, eyes bugging out.

“N-no.” he mumbled, ducking his head. Ren kept smiling, and patted him on the head.

“Good.”

*

“…you’re kind of terrifying, Tachibana. You know that, right.” Shima muttered at him, when they were walking towards the ice cream store to meet up with the others.

Ren laughed easily, and bounced his back pack slightly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“He’s so _tall._ How did we never notice how tall he’s gotten. And his _shoulders.”_ Tanabe was muttering on his other side.

Ren thought Tanabe was going through another Sawada-engineered existential crisis until he realised that the other boy was talking about _him._

*

“Are you kidding? Have you _seen_ his pictures of his older brother? I always knew he was going to get this big. He’s lucky the last of the Devilish generation graduated last year, I’ve heard _stories_ about how anyone as big as Ren-chan got roped in to play whether they liked it or not, when they were around.” Ayumi said loudly, later, digging into her banana split while the others had a good laugh at his expense.

Ren whimpered, and hid his face in his hands, wondering if this was what Makoto had to deal with all the way through high school, because he _knew_ he’d gotten his growth spurt a whole lot later than his onii-chan had.

*

They were roughly a month or so from graduation when the unthinkable happened.

A strange, white haired foreigner appeared at their classroom door and _snarled,_ making most of them yelp or jerk out of their seats, crashing to the ground and _staying_ there if it meant that they wouldn’t attract the frightening man’s attention.

Sawada, though? Sawada woke up with a start, blinked at him, and said “Squalo-san? What’re you doing here? Am I dreaming?”

Everyone goggled at him, and Ren did mean _everyone_ , from the students in the class to the teacher gaping by the black board to the ‘Squalo-san’ still standing at the door with his lips parted in a truly frightening grin.

“Why, brat, I didn’t realise you dreamt of me enough in your free time that your first reaction to seeing me in your school is wondering if you’re dreaming.”

Ren, who’d somehow ended up right behind Sawada during the last seat placement shuffle, could only stare as Sawada actually squawked and flailed and went violently red in a way that none of them had really seen since the first few months of their second year.

The man at their door _laughed,_ loud and bright, and turned around and walked away, not saying a word, leaving Sawada to hurriedly try to pack his bag, ultimately giving up and rushing after him when a yell down the corridors demanded that he ‘hurry the fuck up’ because they ‘couldn’t keep Boss waiting’.

“Sawada-” the teacher started weakly, still clearly in shock.

Sawada stopped by her immediately, and dropped into a deep, apologetic bow. The action stunned her enough that she didn’t get the chance to protest before Sawada straightened and shot out the door, out of sight in seconds.

“What? Just, _what.”_ Tanabe bit out, later, squatting with the rest of them out by the field during club hours, after school.

“Why couldn’t this have happened _last_ year,” Ayumi whined, yelping when Asada bopped her lightly on the head.

“Be happy that it didn’t happen last year, it was _scary.”_ Shima ground out.

Ren grunted, and rubbed at his eyes.

“I’m not sure if it was just scary or if we should put this down as another one of the ‘Sawada makes no sense’ facts.” He grumbled, welcoming the weight of the arm that Kawamura threw over his shoulders.

“Doesn’t _everything_ get put down as a ‘Sawada makes no sense’ fact?” Yoshimura asked practically.

They nodded as one, glum.

“Hey, did you guys see the Maserati in front of the school earlier?” Umeda called out, the last of their mini circle to turn up. They blinked up at him, confused.

“Mase-what?” Yoshimura asked bemusedly.

Weirdly enough, it was Tanabe who jumped at her before anyone else, grabbing her by the shoulders and shaking her.

“How can you not know what a Maserati is?” he demanded incredulously, while both Ayumi and Umeda burst into laughter.

“Hey, hey. Calm down, nerd, before you knock something loose,” Kawamura laughed, while Ren reached out to tug Tanabe away. He didn’t come easily, and his hands still clenched and unclenched even after he let go of Yoshimura’s shoulders.

“A Maserati. _Here._ A _Mase_ \- wait.” He stopped, and turned to stare up at Umeda, who abruptly choked around a snicker.

“When exactly did you see it?”

Ren blinked at that, and slowly glanced towards Shima, whose eyes had narrowed into slivers.

“Erm. Second period, I think. Our teacher had sent me out to pick up some files from the staffroom.”

“…wasn’t second period when that white haired _gaijin_ showed up?” Tanabe asked after a beat, making Ren cringe.

“ _Language,_ Nabe-chan,” Ayumi cooed at him, looking proud, of all things.

“Don’t call me that,” he shot back, irate, before focusing his gaze on Umeda again. Ren was a little disturbed by how he’d never really noticed how sharp and pale Tanabe’s eyes were, behind the glass.

“…Did you see anything else?” Asada asked, when it became clear no one else was going to.

Umeda eyed the lot of them, and his face screwed up into an expression that looked painful.

“If I did, would I have walked up so calmly?” he asked, sounding disappointed.

The reactions to that varied from groans (Ayumi) to relief (Ren).

Ren actually wasn’t sure how relieved he was, though. Because it was getting to the point that even the tear-my-beating-heart-for-you obsession they all had with Sawada wasn’t enough to keep the incessant curiosity at check.

See? This was why the earlier months of the Effect were easier. They hadn’t been _thinking_ then.

*

 _Of course_ the school was going to get bombed on their graduation day. It wasn’t like anything could top that, right?

The students mostly escaped unscathed, there were no fatalities and everyone was accounted for. Except for Sawada, who’d somehow managed to disappear into thin air right around when the explosions had started going off, thankfully nowhere near the indoor auditorium where they’d gathered.

Ren, already well adjusted to how strange life could get when Sawada was in any way involved, simply hunkered down with his friends, keeping his arms around both Ayumi and Tanabe to make them stay in place, while Umeda shielded Asada and Yoshimura, much to their disgust, trying to make him back off with growls of ‘you big misogynistic brute’. Which Umeda ignored, of course. Shima, comfortably crouching down nearby along with Kawamura, snickered slightly, and they all as one ignored the way the classmates who _weren’t_ under Sawada’s thrall stared at them in frightened disbelief. The ones who’d been subject to the effect right from the beginning looked about at tickled about the situation as they were. Obviously.

“Stay calm, please remain where you’re seated until Campus Security can lead you to safety-” were the words blaring from where the Principal was hiding behind his podium.

Well, that was strange. The students who weren’t under the grip of the Sawada Effect looked terrified, but the teachers looked perfectly fine.

“Do you think…?” Ayumi muttered, loud enough for only him and Tanabe to hear.

Tanabe pushed his spectacle frame up, frowning.

“No, I don’t think so. At least one of us would’ve noticed if they’d been hooked too,” he muttered back, though _he_ was loud enough for the other to hear.

Umeda grunted.

“I think I know why – you remember how our senpai tried to rope me in to join the Amefuto club in our second year, right? Well, I saw some of the old training videos with other people who’d been ‘volunteered’ – one of the students who graduated before we joined the school had been _very_ liberal with munition and explosives. Even during practice.” He explained in an undertone, making everyone blink at him.

“Wait, what?” Ren asked, speaking for the rest of them. Because, that? Sounded like something _someone_ should have mentioned, before they reached their _graduation day._

Kawamura laughed nervously, making everyone’s attention turn to him next.

“Yeah, I saw those too. When they tried to get me to try for Quarterback because of how tall I am, though I never really understood why they wanted me because of _height._ I thought the explosions and gunshots were animation.”

They _stared._

Umeda, though, looked _delighted._

“Did you see the one with Mamori-senpai and the flamethrower?”

“Oh! Oh, yeah. That was _awesome.”_ Kawamura replied, grinning.

“Is no one going to comment on the fact that our senpai actually used guns, bombs and flamethrowers on campus, got caught in the act, made _videos_ , and didn’t get in trouble for any of it?” Asada asked rhetorically.

On the stage, Sawada’s ash-haired genius-delinquent friend appeared out of the shadows of the wings and easily strolled up to the podium to crouch down beside it, presumably to talk to the Principal.

Listening to Umeda and Kawamura eagerly discussing the crazier scenes from the videos they’d both been forced to watch by the Captain of the Amefuto team, while the rest of his friends swore in admiration or disbelief, Ren ducked his head into Ayumi’s shoulder and laughed till he choked.

*

The school somehow managed to get things under control and _went on with the graduation_ , in the end. Much to the confused horror of the parents present. Ren was still trying not to snicker, right alongside his friends and other old classmates from his first and second year, and hoping to God that his brother and Ran hadn’t turned up with their parents. Because this incident wasn’t going to make it any easier to convince them to let him stick on in Tokyo.

Sawada had reappeared partway through the Principal’s speech, looking a little wild-eyed and rough at the edges, but otherwise fine. With no immediately visible bruises or wounds.

“Everything okay?” Ren found himself mumbling, despite himself, ignoring the horrified looks anyone in listening distance shot him. Because they _weren’t supposed to talk to Sawada about these things._

Sawada shot him a partially harassed but mostly exasperated look.

“Well, it is now,” he said, before what Ren had said or, more likely, that _Ren_ had said it, actually registered and his face went white.

 _Ha,_ Ren thought, feeling distantly vindicated, while Tanabe’s fingers tightened on the sleeve of his blazer.

He and Sawada stared each other down for a few seconds before Sawada finally relaxed, the hard cut of his shoulders and the tight jut of his jaw softening almost infinitesimally. The impact on the rest of them was a lot more obvious, though – Sawada relaxing meant they _all_ relaxed, some unconsciously, some not.

“It is now,” Sawada repeated, under his breath, voice a lot more self-assured than before. Ren nodded back, taking the words at face-value, and turned his attention back to the stage, where they’d called for the valedictorian of their year to come up and say a few words to everyone else.

*

That might have been the end of it, all said and done. They’d all been mentally preparing themselves for the graduation, their preparation ironically focusing on more than just life after high school, and wherever that might lead. None of the students victim to the Sawada Effect would have admitted it to anyone else except for those also suffering from the same, but a lot of them were just plain distraught at the thought that Sawada wasn’t likely to be in their immediate vicinity ever again, after they left the school.

Ren didn’t think he’d ever really be able to forget Sawada. Or the sheer weirdness of everything that happened around him – most of which they had absolutely no answers for, even now. But Sawada by himself? He’d remain behind, the memory of him and everything about him ingrained as deep as the bones beneath their flesh.

Blind obsession was still obsession, no matter what pretty words they’d all used to describe it, after all.

But it should have been the end. He and his immediate circle were mostly resigned to it, never having lied to themselves like a lot of their other classmates. So he’d been introducing his friends to his brother, sister (and parents, damnit, why couldn’t his onii-chan have made them stay back?!), all of them more than a little teary-eyed for reasons that they weren’t going to own up to in front of anyone else, when their little get together was interrupted by a smiling thirteen year old in a suit, with a fedora tilted to a rakish angle resting on the top of his head.

“Pleasure to meet you, Tachibana-san, such a proud day for us all, I’m the guardian of one of your son’s classmates,” he murmured, shaking hands with Ren’s parents while his voice dragged across Ren’s senses like raw silk in a way that should have been impossible for a little kid to pull off.

He exchanged wide-eyed glances with the others, because somehow, neither of his parents seemed to be registering that a teenager couldn’t possibly be anyone’s guardian. Ignoring the fact that the teenager was very, very weird. In the same vein as the weirdness that surrounded Sawada, come to think of-

Ren went very, very still. The way he did when trying his level best not to attract Ran’s attention, or Ayumi’s, for that matter. Not that it helped much, because he _still_ somehow managed to attract the attention of the freaky little kid.

Who couldn’t be a little kid, not with eyes like those. For one very long second, Ren felt like he was drowning and burning up all at once, sucked into the gravity of the teenager’s gaze. And distantly heard his friends gasping for breath behindaroundbeside him.

“You’ll do,” the man said, his voice cutting through the burning void as effortlessly as a bullet could tear through flesh, and the connection disappeared like it was never there.

His parents didn’t seem to have noticed that anything had happened, but Ren was gratified when he noticed how narrow his brother and sister’s eyes had gotten. They weren’t anywhere near as lucid as Ren’s, or the eyes of his friends, but that was understandable.

They hadn’t ever been exposed to the Effect, after all. And, after that? Recovering from whatever the man hidden away in the flesh of a teenager had done to them was a cakewalk.

It was as though he could read the thoughts running through the heads of Ren and his friends, though, because the man had the cheek to look _amused._ He opened his mouth, presumably to explain whatever in hell they’d ‘do’ for, when he was interrupted by a localised typhoon that eventually revealed itself to be a frazzled looking Sawada Tsunayoshi, uniform as messy as ever, hair looking more like the unholy union of a rat’s nest and a molehill piled up on his head, and still as soul-searingly beautiful as he always was.

“ _Reborn,”_ he was hissing, “ _what_ did I say about not trying to recruit any more of my classmates?”

“Manners, Dame-Tsuna, can’t you see that I’m trying to have a polite conversation here?” the man, Reborn, replied easily, brushing his fingers across the hold that Sawada had on his shoulders and somehow getting out of it without any visible effort.

“Is this your ward, then, Reborn-san?” Ren’s father asked politely, much to Ren and Sawada’s collective horror.

Ayumi coughed, obviously trying to hide hysterical laughter, and the others weren’t any better. Umeda and Kawamura weren’t even _trying_ to hide their laughter. Ren had terrible friends. That were amazing, sometimes, but mostly terrible.

He felt his heart twist when he noticed the gently reminiscent smile on Makoto’s face.

Ren still wasn’t sure how Sawada did it, but he somehow managed to drag his ‘guardian’ away soon after, though the blandly amused look on the man’s face said that the only reason Sawada had been successful was because he’d _allowed_ the manhandling of his person.

Ren was finally allowed to finish introducing his friends to his parents, both of whom were starting to look a little more excited about his graduation, and about all the friends he’d made after leaving home.

His sister and Ayumi got along like a house on fire, which was more than a little terrifying. And made him wish, just a little bit, that he’d never allowed them to meet. But the quiet joy on his onii-chan’s face when all his friends tumbled forward to introduce _themselves,_ if only because Ren had found it next to impossible to not gush about his brother every moment in which they weren’t mooning after Sawada, made up for any horror his sister and his best friend were liable to unleash on the rest of them.

“Bro-con,” Tanabe muttered at him, lips quirking wryly.

Ren rolled his eyes and punched him in the shoulder, making him yelp while Kawamura, Umeda and Shima all keeled over, laughing.

*

“Tachibana-san,” said a soft voice, when nearly everyone had already drifted out of the school. .

Ren had stayed back because he’d wanted to talk to their career advisor about something, and had pointedly ushered his family away, trusting them to his mini-circle and promising that he would meet up with them as soon as possible.

When he glanced around, wondering who was calling for him on the mostly deserted driveway leading out of the school, he was more than a little surprised to see a face that was still vividly recognisable, even if he hadn’t seen it on more than one occasion.

“Kyoko-san,” he said automatically, her name fresh in his mind with all the conversations he’d had about her and the rest of Sawada’s eclectic set of friends, and cringed right after, because it couldn’t be polite to call her that when he actually knew her family name.

She just offered him a sweet smile, though, not looking at all offended.

“…is there anything I can do for you?” Ren asked uncomfortably, because having Sawada’s maybe-girlfriend appear out of the blue before him made no logical sense.

“Not at all,” she replied, “I just wanted to thank you and your friends for all that you’ve done for Tsuna.”

Ren blinked slowly at her, taken aback.

“But I didn’t do anything. None of us did. And even if we _did_ do anything worth thanking us for, you really should be telling everyone. Just telling me makes no sense.” He offered, awkward. His discomfort skyrocketed when she covered her mouth delicately with her fingers to muffle the giggles that were threatening to spill out.

None of the girls he was close to were like this; as beautiful as broken glass with just as many sharp edges. Though Gou-nee and his sister came close.

“But you’re the only one who actually confronted Tsu-kun about it,” she offered, lips curled ever-so-slightly.

Ren rolled his eyes, suddenly understanding why she was speaking to _him._

“All I did was ask a question, Kyoko-san. Nothing else. And I asked it rather after the fact. I didn’t do anything special.”

“And yet, if you hadn’t asked the question, Tsu-kun would have continued to assume that none of you had noticed how difficult his life is. Or how hard he tried to hide it. Your question helped him more than you will ever know or understand, Tachibana-san.”

Ren stared at her. Because she was right. He _didn’t_ understand.

“Is he going to be okay?” he found himself asking. Because even if he’d resigned himself to being in unrequited love with a male classmate that he was never likely to meet again in his lifetime, he was concerned for him anyway.

Kyoko-san was right about just how difficult Sawada’s life was, after all. Even if Ren and the rest of his classmates under Sawada’s thrall had chalked up all the oddities to general weirdness that followed Sawada everywhere, they all knew for a fact that those oddities added up to something that couldn’t be very good. Or particularly above the board.

He was allowed to worry.

From the sweet smile Kyoko-san offered him, he suspected that she was very well acquainted with the thoughts that were running through Ren’s head. He found himself smiling back helplessly, because at least this confirmed that he and his friends weren’t the only sufferers in this situation.

“I can’t say that he’s going to be perfectly okay, Tachibana-san. Life doesn’t work like that, and particularly not his. But I promise you that we all try very hard to make sure that he stays as close to okay as he possibly can.”

He nodded slowly at that. Because it sounded comfortingly familiar. Much like the status quo he and his classmates had maintained through their years of high school.

Ren wasn’t sure if he ever wanted to meet Sawada’s parents. Or whoever had been in charge of bringing him up, if that hadn’t been Reborn-san. Even if they were perfectly decent people. Because it was starting to feel like it took a village to raise him. And take care of him, even after he was well into adulthood.

“We’d help. You know we would.” He found himself saying impulsively, just when she’d lowered her head in a soft informal bow, clearly ready to take her leave after saying her piece. His words had her pausing, her features creasing in a strange expression that was one part surprise and three parts not.

“I know,” she said, “and that is why Tsu-kun would never ask.”

Ren stayed there, watching her leave, and wondered if that Maserati Umeda had seen way back when was idling somewhere on the campus grounds, ready to take her back to wherever it was Sawada and his friends went when he wasn’t confined to the school campus.

*

“I’m probably going to love him for the rest of my life,” he found himself confessing to his brother, more than a little melodramatically and well after everyone else in the apartment had fallen asleep. He had no idea how they’d managed to fit so many people into his tiny apartment, but they’d managed anyway.

They were crouching in the tiny space that made up his balcony, just about enough to hang up clothes to dry. Makoto didn’t look surprised by his confession, but then, his brother had always been able to read him better than anyone else.

That, or his friends had slipped up when he’d stayed behind in the school and been ambushed by Sawada’s girlfriend.

“There’s nothing wrong in loving someone, Ren,” Makoto murmured, and Ren ducked his head, letting himself slide sideways so he could curl up into his brother’s side. His onii-chan just laughed, getting an arm around his shoulders and completely willing to share more of himself if it meant that Ren would be more comfortable.

He wasn’t sure if he loved or hated that about his brother. The lines between the two were blurred, when Makoto’s kindness was involved.

“Isn’t there something wrong in loving someone to the point of obsession?” he found himself asking, and not sure if he should.

His brother’s arm only tightened around his shoulders, though, the easy strength of his grip like a balm to quell Ren’s unease.

 “The only time love is a mistake is when you love to the point of self-harm,” his brother said, voice soft but with a quiet strength and a sense of conviction that had Ren holding his breath.

“…even if this love might not be love at all?” he asked, after a long moment.

Because it was possible that it was something else, Ren knew. They called it the Sawada Effect and being in Sawada’s thrall for a reason, after all. Love wasn’t meant to be like this. It wasn’t meant to be blind obsession and idolatry conjoined into something that was both and neither of the two.

“Even then.” Makoto replied, and brushed his lips across the top of Ren’s head.

Ren blinked rapidly, and ignored how wet his cheeks felt, allowing himself to wallow in the unconditional comfort of his brother’s arms, at least for the night.

He would have to figure out if he really wanted to call the number on the card he’d found in his pocket later. Something told him that calling when he wasn’t completely certain would be a bad idea. At least he wouldn’t be alone in the venture, since his entire mini-circle had found the same calling cards in their pockets after returning home.

 _You’ll do,_ Reborn-san had said. He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know what that was supposed to mean, but it could wait.

For now, there was this. There was family, with his father’s soft snores, the quiet sounds that Ran had always made when she tossed and turned in bed, the quiet stillness that was his mother’s presence at night, and the broad, rock-like steadiness of his brother, easily curled around him in a hold that was as much to protect as it was to simply cling to him, clearly having missed Ren about as much as Ren had missed him.

It wasn’t long till Ran woke up and crawled out too, curling up on his other side, ducking under his arm so she could be a part of the embrace.

“You’re terrible. If you’re going to be like this, you shouldn’t have left in the first place.” She said primly, smirking up at him when he frowned.

“Hush, you two, you don’t want to wake our parents up,” Makoto murmured, making them both wince.

“Sorry, onii-chan,” they both mumbled.

Makoto went still, before pressing his face into the loose swathe of Ren’s night shirt, muffling his laugher.

“Onii-chan?” Ran asked, reaching out to pet his hair worriedly.

“You-you both sounded like you were nine years old again,” Makoto wheezed out, once he’d gotten himself under control.

Ren blinked at that, and traded an unamused glance with his sister.

They turned as one to bear him down with a tickle attack, not stopping till he yelled for mercy, crying with the weight of his laughter, while their parents groaned from inside, begging them to shut up and go to sleep.

*

 _“You did_ what.” _Tsuna bit out._

_He stared his old tutor down, unimpressed when the only reaction Reborn had to his stare was to roll his eyes._

_“I left them calling cards,” he repeated. “A lot of your high school classmates make for good raw material, I went around and introduced myself as your guardian to quite a few of them. They could be promising new additions to the Famiglia you’ve set out to build for yourself.”_

_“Calling them raw material is only a few steps away from calling them cannon fodder. And what happened to not getting civilians involved? It’s bad enough that Kyoko and Takeshi somehow roped Mochida in, I don’t want any more of my schoolmates getting involved in this life. It isn’t exactly fun and games, Reborn, you should know that better than anyone else.”_

_“I’ve put the decision in their hands, the choices they choose to make are their own. Don’t flatter yourself into thinking that all their choices are governed by their regard for you.”_

_Tsuna didn’t say anything, and forced himself to look away from the hard set of Reborn’s face, somehow more alien on a teenager than it had been on his infant form. The older Reborn got, the more obvious it became that there was something decidedly not-normal about him. Maybe something hyperreal._

_And that was a lie. It was a lie that his classmates choices wouldn’t be influenced at least to some extent by the connection they had to him._

_He’d realised too late that his Flames had somehow left him with a following nearly as fanatical as Kyoya-san’s Disciplinary Squad had been, back in Nami-chuu. He’d dropped everything and taken a flight to Palermo, travelling though the Italian countryside till he’d found his way till the Varia’s Compound, as he’d heard jii-chan call it on more than one occasion. He’d proceeded to camp out on the door step until someone finally got exasperated enough to let him in, since none of the rookie members had had any success in scoring any hits off of him, while he’d been camping outside._

_Squalo had taken one look at him and told the kids to throw him into the closest available bath and to not let him out until he smelt cleaner._

_Tsuna had gone with a small smile, because at least he’d succeeded at wearing them down enough to let him in._

_The next step had been camping out in front of_ Xanxus’ _office, being stubborn when he could and hightailing it when he couldn’t. The song and dance continued nearly till the end of Tsuna’s first year summer break until Xanxus finally relented, letting him in and demanding to know what the fuck he wanted._

_Tsuna immediately requested help to control the harmonising effects of his flame. Since the effect was running amok and he was unconsciously hooking people in left, right and centre whether he wanted to or not._

_Xanxus had looked vaguely amused at his predicament, but he’d readily asked why exactly Tsuna had a problem with that._

_Tsuna had stared him down and said that he didn’t want followers who didn’t have any free will to choose his rule._

_Tsuna’s Intuition had paid off, in that moment. Xanxus had lost all traces of amusement immediately, and he’d taken Tsuna to task soon after._

_He’d returned nearly two weeks after the classes were supposed to start, but at least he hadn’t been binding people to himself as badly as he had towards the end of his first year._

_Xanxus had explained that it was impossible to completely turn the effect off, that a lot of that kind of control would only come with age. And experience. But at least Tsuna didn’t feel like he was mind-raping his classmates any longer._

_The next long break, he took a trip to Dino’s territories and requested the same help from him._

_Reborn had been terribly amused with him, when he’d finally returned to Tokyo. Because he’d chosen to go after two very different kinds of Sky Flame users to learn what he wanted to._

_Tsuna had shrugged it off, because the addition of what Dino had learnt over the years had helped Tsuna increase his control to the point that there were only some stray instances of classmates harmonising with him through his third year._

_It wasn’t fair, expecting people who’d become beholden to him against their will to throw their lot in with him for the rest of their lives._

_“Their choices are their own, Dame-Tsuna. Don’t overthink it.” Reborn said, and Tsuna felt his small hands press up into the side of his face, fingers easily curling around his jaw._

_“Will it always be like this? Taking people in against their will?” he found himself asking._

_Because, of all that he’d seen since his life’s course had taken a nosedive after meeting Reborn, this side effect of his Flame attribute was easily the worst._

_“Of course not. That’s why you learn control Dame-Tsuna. So you don’t hurt people when you don’t want to.” Reborn said, voice snide, but the grip of his fingers was gently comforting._

_Tsuna sighed, and bowed his head._

_“What if some of them_ do _decide to give us a call,” he asked, voice bleak._

_“Then you face them head-on, and see where that path leads you.” Reborn replied, words steely as they left his mouth._

_Tsuna nodded, his breath guttering out of him with a tired sigh. Facing them head-on, with the truth of his ridiculous life, and the truth of what he had done to them. He would put himself in their hands, and leave them free to decide, as Reborn had ordered him to do._

_It might not be the kind of decision expected of him, when he was supported to be the heir apparent to the Vongola, but it was a decision that he felt he could live with._

_If nothing else, this way, he knew he could trust that the people who had chosen to follow him were there only because they wanted to be._

_*_

_“…you did what_?” _Tsuna asked, longsuffering._

_This situation was starting to look uncomfortably familiar.  Reborn had to be listening in and laughing at him somewhere, he just knew it._

_“I went to thank Tachibana-san.” Kyoko replied, offering him one of her particularly angelic demonic smiles._

_“_ Why _would you_ do _that?” Tsuna mumbled, pained, and half-wondering if he should get a hold of Tachibana’s residential address from the school administration so he could go and apologise for Kyoko’s everything in person._

_“Why, Tsu-kun? Because he did something that should have been done years ago.” She said, mild, and Tsuna winced, forcing himself to not get up and walk away._

_Reborn would have let him go, and would have taken it out of his hide when he least expected it. Kyoko, though? He had no idea what Kyoko would do to him, and to be very honest, he didn’t want to know._

_None of them wanted to know what Kyoko was capable of, when she was irritated. Hana and Haru both went silent when the rest of them asked about it, and anything that could make_ that _pair go quiet was worth avoiding like the plague._

_He felt her fingers close around his, and winced again._

_She didn’t need to elaborate, after all. Looking up into Tachibana’s awkwardly determined face in the auditorium, with his Intuition screaming in his head, warning him that nearly every one of his year mates in the near vicinity were listening in, had been enough of an object lesson._

_It was strange. He’d spent three years trying not to connect to anyone in his class, because he was scared that his friendship would do more to hurt them than not. It had certainly hurt his middle school classmates, after all. Nearly all his closest friends had chosen to follow him down a path that he wished_ he _had had the choice to not walk on. The fact that he’d somehow pulled in nearly every one of his first year classmates, against their will, only made it worse._

_He’d had no right to involve them in his life._

_And yet, Tachibana and the rest had never stopped giving, had never stopped welcoming him into the discussions that took place in class, always keeping an eye out for him even when he’d never expected anything of them. He wanted to say that it was another side effect of his flame’s Harmony attribute, but Reborn’s words were still ringing in his head. Even if he_ had _drawn them in against both their will and his own, by the end of their third year, Tsuna was at least reasonably convinced that they weren’t blindly giving in to everything he said or did anymore._

 _But that only made their unflagging kindness_ worse _. He_ didn’t deserve it.

_Kyoko’s fingers tightened around his hands, drawing himself out of his moment of self-pity, and when he looked up at her, she was looking completely exasperated._

_“You’re silly, Tsu-kun,” she said, making Tsuna groan, trying to get his hands away. And accepting the press of her lips against his temple with a pout when he couldn’t._

_“Maybe you should talk to them, sometime.” Takeshi offered, later, smiling when Tsuna turned a disbelieving look on him._

_“Maybe he shouldn’t._ Omertà _, baseball-idiot, it isn’t just another pretty word for you to ignore from those language classes Reborn-san put you through,” Hayato snapped, teeth gritted around the filter of the unlit cigarette dangling from his lips._

_Takeshi, predictably, laughed some more, and Tsuna was left behind, sighing as his friends whirled away, Hayato yelling furiously._

_‘Want me to go keep an eye on them?” Hana offered, peeking in through the open door._

_“That would be good, yes. Thank you.”_

_“Don’t thank me. We don’t need them blowing up any more of our property, our budget’s in the red often enough without them making it_ worse. _” She replied, bland, and Tsuna laughed nervously, wondering if he should hide underneath his bed until she calmed down. Or left._

_It was a good suggestion, though. Takeshi’s. Even if Hayato didn’t really like it. Tsuna knew that if he honestly wanted to go ahead with it, Hayato would be willing to help him make sure his classmates didn’t get dragged in too deep without them expressly wanting it_

_If nothing else, he could try to explain. And apologise. Though he had the sinking feeling that none of them really wanted an apology of any sort._

_(Tachibana’s eyes had been so serious, and worried. And he hadn’t been the only one. When Tsuna had glanced around, everyone who’d been glancing back at him had looked just as worried. Not for themselves, no. But for_ him. _)_

_He rolled his eyes when Kyoko peeked in a few minutes after Hana had left, and waved her in, letting his head drop back onto his pillow._

_“So?” she asked, smiling, and he made a face, turning away._

_“Thank you,” he muttered, once he was sure she wasn’t going to laugh at him. “For thanking him. Them.”_

_She didn’t laugh. The hand that patted him on the head still felt placating and amused in equal measure, though._

**Author's Note:**

>  **TRIGGER WARNING:** The only real trigger warning in this is the dubious consent implied in the blind attraction that all of Tsuna’s classmates have for him. Tsuna, however, never takes advantage of it. And there are absolutely no sex scenes in this story, overt or otherwise, so the dub-con mentioned in the tags isn’t sexual dub–con. Though I would argue that this situation is just as emotionally scarring as that would be, if for very different reasons.
> 
> ***
> 
> 1 – Mako’s friend who’s ‘leery’ of hypersexualised relationships is Haru, if anyone’s curious. Haru in this verse is Ace, though not necessarily Aro. Kudos and credit for that specific characterisation of him go to a rather well known fic on AO3 by **Inky** that most of you are likely to recognise, if you’re at all familiar with _Free!_. Even if you don’t ship the pairing.
> 
> 2 – I belatedly realised, only after I’d finished typing this out, mind, that **half_sleeping** already has a story called the Tsuna Effect posted on AO3 and also on ffnet, if I’m not mistaken. Crediting the original turn of phrase to them, even if the similarity wasn’t planned for. The Effect here isn’t exactly the same, after all – let’s just say that it’s a side effect of the Harmony attribute of Tsuna’s Sky flame. And it’s completely unconscious. (Until it isn’t.)
> 
> ***
> 
> Before anyone asks – _Yes._ Tsuna and the others are all students at Deimon. There, confirmation! Though I’m curious – how many of you spotted that before the graduation day scenes? 
> 
> This is definitely a TWT for every series except for KHR, since I’ve thrown a whole lot of easter eggs into this piece just to make things amusing. Basically? Sena, Monta and the other Devilbat first years are the same age as Eijun and co. So they were all third years when Tsuna, Ren and the rest of their classmates were first years. (Seto and Yui appearing in the cultural day scene was because they were bored and wanted to get out of the dorm. Following their kouhai to Deimon’s cultural day was a good excuse to get away.) 
> 
> I leave it to you to decide whether Kuroko’s bunch were first, second or third years when Tsuna and the rest start high school. Keep in mind Gokudera’s a year above the others because of how well he was doing in school. It’s just him being an overachiever because he wants to finish his education and come running back to Tokyo so he can watch over his precious Juudaime again – him being in Kyoto at all was Tsuna getting one over him when they were all discussing which schools they’d like to study at.
> 
> So, this is possibly one of the most random crossover fics I’ve decided to pen down, I have no idea where it came from. Let alone the fact that nearly the entire thing is in Tachibana Ren’s POV. Which was fun. Mako’s brother and sister are such cute kids. Apologies if any of the _Free!_ related information or characterisation is incorrect, this is the first time I’ve worked with the series. Let me know if you think I need to mark all the other series mentioned in the series tags.
> 
>  **Consider leaving a comment or kudos if you enjoyed this, or even if you just want to go “The hell, Adel? What is this? It makes no sense!”** I’d love to hear what you have to say, the good and the bad.
> 
> Hopefully the bits from ES21 should give me the impetus to finish that multichapter KHRxES21 fic that’s been sitting on my hard drive for years…


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